History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

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To the Maypole, let us on. . .

Historiann.com has a young correspondant reporting from inside the Gothic Revival cloisters of Bryn Mawr College about the new Luke Wilson vehicle, Tenure, which Historiann wrote about a few weeks ago. Our intrepid girl reporter, “E.H.,” says that the movie will be “shooting on campus in late April and early May, while we’re doing final exams.” (Study hard, mes petites! Remember, May Day–and exams–are only three weeks away!) E.H. notes that “Luke Wilson and Danny Koechner have already been on campus; some of my friends have seen them around in the past few days, although filming was supposedly happening over at Rosemont College.” Keep us posted, E.H.–ask your friends to leave comments here, too. Let us know who’s being tapped to play the young female prof, and what you observe about the plotline. Is “Grey College” in the movie going to be single-sex, or co-ed?

This could be Bryn Mawr’s biggest moment on film since Adam’s Rib (1949), one of the last of the classic screwball comedies starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as Amanda and Adam Bonner, attorneys married to each other who square off in court over a case of attempted murder of an adulterous man by his wife. (Interestingly, this sounds kind of like the setup for Tenure, with a male and a female professor squaring off against each other for, well, tenure.) Defense attorney Amanda makes an explicitly feminist argument in order to lead the jury to acquit the defendant: She argues that “woman is the equal of man – is entitled to equality before the law,” and so calls three highly successful women to the stand, “each representing a particular branch of American womanhood, for not only one woman is on trial here, but all women.” The first witness Amanda Bonner calls is Dr. Margaret Brodeigh (Elizabeth Flournoy), who rattles off her resume thusly: “A.B., B.S. – Bryn Mawr, M.A., Ph.D., M.D. – Columbia…Diplome des Sciences Chimiques de la Sorbonne, Paris, Docteur Honora-Scholar [probably Honoris Causa, h/t rootlesscosmo in the comments] de Philosophie, Universite…” Yes, that’s typical–sadly, Historiann is an underachiever compared to her classmates. And although this was something of a minor comedy, Hepburn in this movie seems more gorgeous than ever as a tough and self-assured 42-year old than she did in her younger years.